Shallow Buyers

Recently, I’ve been doing a fair amount of working from home, which also means I get to see some daytime TV – particularly the BBC morning stuff, as I’m still nowhere near chavvy enough to want to watch Jeremy Sodding Shitbag Kyle (to give him his full name) which seems to still have an unhealthy preoccupation with property.

One of these programmes, “The Unsellables” focusses on (as you may have already guessed) properties that aren’t selling. None of what they do is overly surprising – clean/tidy up, get rid of clutter, tart the place up, blah blah blah. And I understand all those things – up to a point.

But the points they make in this programme (and I’m sure in many others) are that people won’t buy a place if they don’t like the wall colour, or clutter, or – god help us – the furniture. Now I’ve repeated been accused over the years of being too harsh on people etc., but are people really that dumb/unimaginative that they can’t picture their own stuff in a house, or see that it won’t take much to change a place from scruff-tip to decent place?

I don’t know – maybe it’s to the advantage of others. I know that when we looked at the house we’re now in, it hadn’t been popular because it was so seventies, and there were a number of things that really needed doing to it. And maybe it was also because we were prepared to do that work, even though we knew it’d take time. (Admittedly, we didn’t expect it to take the 2+ years it’s taken, but there we go) But that work has left us with a place we actually like, and that has added significant value to the place – plus (I hope) making it far more sellable as and when we do decide to move on. Not that we’re planning to, you understand – but it’s still something to think about.

So for us it was worth looking past the seventies tat, the horrific ornaments, the vile carpets, the monolithic fireplace and the awkward bits of layout – and I suspect that now if we were to look at buying this place in the state it’s now in, we’d be looking at spending a significant amount more than we’ve actually put in to the place.

All of which brings me back to wondering what the hell these buyers on “The Unsellables” et al are really thinking (or not, as the case may be) when they see these properties and not liking them. After all, if the sellers are so desperate to sell, why not put in an offer that’s well under the asking price?  Do some work – hell, even just some basic painting, cleaning, and moving stuff about, and the place would be back up to scratch for selling at the full price.

I must be missing something on this, but I really don’t know what…